BoSoxBiker

Congratulations!!! That's a wonderful experience. I'm very happy for you. I hope one-day you can post a video or audio clip and a pic to share it with us. Happy playing!

have a little respect! J/K Out of curiosity, is this the 'bird that was holed up in some airport security closet for decades?

I ended up calling my guitar salesman late yesterday and ended up with a J Rocket "Archer". It works perfectly. Gobs of head room. The tone knob acts kind of like a "sweepable mids" knob. The combination of drive and "treble" to the tone you want and back off the output to properly gain stage. As simple and effective as it can be. My days of rummaging through the controls of flabby amp sims for the perfect amount of tonal girth and proper distortion for hours is over. I just went from rubber-bands on ping pong paddles to electric guitars in an instant. It even made my older and very heavy MIk Epi LP Custom with worn out pickups perk up. Thanks for this. Based on the video by TC Electronics I just watched, the functionality I was looking for might have been covered by the Spark pedal. The Spark pedal does so much more, of course.

The cause of the buzz can be a long way away from the buzz.

I have a instant response when I see a pic of an HD-35 taken at just the proper angle. Perhaps is a commonly used stock image. It's like I can imagine it booming something out. I played one the day I ordered my SJ. I like what I have, but that HD-35 experience stayed with me like the Hummingbird did a few years back. I kind of hope I don't see a Dove on a wall before I get an HD-35. Kind of.

They were OK - I suppose. Man!!! You got to see them do Monkey Man! How awesome is that? I gotta hand it to them. They played here in Raleigh on July 1st four years ago. That's some serious heat and humidity for anyone, let alone for 70+ year old gents. I must have drank 7 gallons of water.

Hi All, I've got a wonderful 5-6 year old Gibson Les Paul Traditional Pro ('59 Neck) . it has that Active mid-range boost circuitry that works wonders in the new age of direct to digital recording. I was hoping to be able to find a guitar effects pedal that does a similar thing as that circuit. I want to be able to run a signal from any guitar I have into a pedal that will change my signal in a similar manner as the active mid-boost in my Gibson. I'm not sure what one would even call this, let alone good brands/models. I know it's not a standard Volume, Distortion or Overdrive pedal, but that's as far as I get. If it matters, I typical run my guitar straight into Universal Audio Apollo interface via High-Z channel. From there, the signal goes through digital amp simulators and other effects. This pedal, if it exists, would be placed between the Guitar and the Apollo.

Billroy, I've got no first hand experience. i did do a search a couple weeks ago and found some chit chat about different sounding low-mids. Maybe one having a fuller low end while the other was more punchy. I don't really recall which was which now that I think about it. How's that for memory? Hah!

I've been fond of the flamed maple. Got a flamed cap Gibson LP, the SJ-200 and a Taylor 614. My PRS SE is a Quilt. If I go electric this year, it will be a flamed ES-335 in Blueberry Burst. 🙂

Very interesting. Thanks for the insights. You mentioned the primary non-Gibson competition for the next one.

Best of luck with your search! You hunting down vintages or newer models? I agree with Jinder and anyone who touts it's ease to record. It seems especially nice to me when using a matched-mics pair. Very manageable in a small, not so well treated room(yet) .

Congrats on the new guitar! I do think it fits you and your style very well. Nice performance, too, btw.

Drones are great. Put some cans on and do a sort of humming sound to this. You will know when you're on pitch. It's kind of a weird feeling. Cello drone on E I actually bought this series and totally spaced that I had them until someone said the word "drone" above.

I do the bulk of my searching for pitch while practicing, and do try to make the muscle memory scenario thing happen. I have big difficulties sometimes getting up to the correct octave. I practice beside a MIDI keyboard and play the melody line an octave higher using a basic ugly synth tone in my ear as a guide. I eventually remove the keyboard from the equation and sing away. I've done some of my better vocals by doing this while tracking, though. "Dead Flowers" is one that comes to mind. Singing a B G or higher is not an easy thing for me. it obviously does not work all that well. 😁

hehe - yes, gents, that one was tough to hear, but not as bad as some others I stumbled across. "Rolling and Tumbling Blues" was particularly bad. Just imagine my 'skill' at the time with a slide and trying to channel my inner R.L. Burnside. It's really criminal, and that's without posting it anywhere. 😄 Ironically enough, I busted out the epi-dobro this weekend, too, and did that one and the Rolling Stones "You Got the Silver". If this whole music journey had been anything, It's been both therapeutic and fun. I would be a much better guitar player if I focused on just playing more, but doing what I do really fits me well.

I found it. Ugly as can be as it was as I was learning to play. 10 years and 16 days ago. Train wrecks (appropriately enough) and a cough 1/2 way through. I mean, this is ugly and downright shameful. Do yourselves a favor and don't open it. Scarred forever you will be. Except billroy. He has to listen to the whole thing. LOL Crap, forgot the link. Shameful rendition

Lars, I I've not always been a fan of the Dove, but I think I have changed my mind in the past year. I had never heard of the acoustic variety of the Firebird before the other day, though. JuanCarlosvejar: I saw the maple differences the other day, but wrongly (I think) wrote it off as being only a visual aspect. I did some research after reading your comment to discover that the striped variety is supposed to be harder, at a minimum. The descriptions on tonal differences were a little less clear, though.

Nice jobs, gent!! Also, I very much liked the added touch of harmonica. Great accompanymemt. I played this one on the front porch just this past Friday. I started tracking for this song once maybe 7-8 years ago. I'm pretty sure I stopped in disgust with my singing.

So, I saw this gem while looking for standard issue Doves to hopefully re-appear. It's a Firebird. Gibson Firebird at Wildwood Is this along the same line as a Dove was/will be, or are they really two different beasts? They do have one of those 125th anniversary models, but at $7500, yikes! The Dove That 1.575" nut has to be a typo, right?

So an update on my 3 nice acoustics. I took them in to have their repair tech and the guitar department manager to get some professional eyes on them. Sanity checks more than anything. I had done some slow, steady de-humidifying over the past 8-9 months to get my 614 back into shape, make sure I was doing no harm to the 'bird and to look at the SJ's neck. First, the SJ. It was confirmed that there is a twist in the neck, though small. Admittedly, I had originally thought that it was just a low cut nut and saddle that was combining to make things feel too low at times. While the saddle was indeed low, it turned out there is a little, teensy bit of a twist in the neck. The treble side up near the nut being a bit back. I had done the same basic things to the SJ as I did with the 'Bird as described in my previous post. I had quite similar results aside from the neck issue. Anyhow, a week later and I'm in there talking to the kind folks about it. My options were to - A: Get it taken care of under warranty by going through the Gibson support system, which they were glad to assist me with. B: Give it some additional time to see if a little bit of age and a maturing of the wood would have a positive effect. Basically stated, my warranty was going no-place. If I held on to it for however many more months/years and it did not improve and/or I wanted it taken care of, it would be taken care of. However, as they described, I would run the risk of having a repair or replaced guitar come back that may or may not sound as nice or play as well as I what have right now. Kind of a scary thought, I must confess. On to the Taylor 614, the sight-line and straight-edge down the frets to the bridge indicate that bridge as being a tiny bit too high, but everything else was perfectly set up and the tone had regained it's former crisp, loud and luscious glory. He did everything but refuse to do the neck shimming I had brought it in for. It was more of a 'please don't. This plays better than anything on the wall and sounds even better. I would hate to disrupt it. It would be in specs, but there's only one direction this goes.' (paraphrasing) And so it's home with me, too. The 'bird is impressive shape, too, though I forgot to ask them about a ding I had given it. Each guitar does have some minor fret work to be done at some point, but none are causing issues yet. Overall, it was a gratifying experience. I fully expected to be corrected/schooled for doing something wrong. My wife was in ear shot for some of it, too, which never hurts when being told I'm not messing things up. LOL (She was there for the drying too much on my first acoustic about 8-9 years ago. ) Most importantly and in the end, these three guitars are an absolute joy to play and was well worth the effort to get them to that extra 10%.

I think the 'bird was more in line of taking a nice guitar and setting it up to be more weather flexible. We do get some massive humidity in these parts. June, in particular, as Summer starts. I've seen many people from Florida move up here and complain about the humid air when Summer hits.

Very well done! I agree with everyone. Great improvements with your vocals seem to happen often. Nothing wrong with comp'ing a take together. Some of us (me) comp vocal tracks together and they still stink. LOL

My 'Bird has been with me for 11 months and the SJ 200 for 8 months. Both can be tweaked to "play like buttuh", as they say. I've commented on a few threads that I need to keep the relief in a sweet spot on these. Especially with the humid year we've had due to record breaking rainfall amounts. Each guitar has it's own set-up issues to attend to, but I felt like I wanted to get these through any sort of break-in period. Some comments others have made caused me to pause and assess the strategy in play. it just makes sense to make sure the guitar is set up well in all areas to allow for minor changes. I do fear the SJ may have a more serious issue, but I will save that for another thread. I started with the 'bird. It had fewer issues to contend with. I have long decided I was not going to use the UST. I think it was Murph's thread that mudged me to do something about it. It's now safely tied to another wire inside the box. I decided that the action was too low after moving the UST out of play. I ordered saddles from Bob Colosi (one for the SJ) and fit it in this past weekend. The new saddle only needed the ends and flat side knocked down a bit to fit into the saddle-slot. I did also end up knocking 1/128ths or .0078 of an inch, (IIRC) off the bottom. I filed .002" from both the Low-E and D nut slots and cleaned up the other 4 with less than .001" reduction. The High E, B and G strings are sitting right at .018". They could be lower, but I'm taking this slow. The height at both the saddle and nut can be reduced a bit if needed. The action is very nice at 5.5/64th and 3.75/64. Nut slots thick to thin .021" down to .018". The relief is set to .007" using the fret 15th, capo 1st method. A slotted straight edge confirms. No ill effects when using a capo, which was an issue before when made to play easily. While I CAN make it more buttuh-like, this is a really nice combination of buttuh playability and clearance. I still have a bit of material that could be removed from the saddle and the nut according to Dan Erlewine, but I am taking this slow. I put a new set of Elixer Polyweb 80/20 12's on it and it's been singing like a bird for 5 days, which included a lot of rainy, humid days that would easily cause issues before. I think this set-up has more lee-way in it to handle small weather changes and such. It's early, but so far so good. I get to have my cake and eat it, too, as the saying goes. (ps - The only thing left is a few spots on the frets. Six spots failed the rocker-test, though none of them were horrible. This is down the road as i need to get the proper set of tools and supplies, and then practice on several clunkers with very bad fret issues. I could get into some seriously low action territory once this is done and still retain clearance for both tone and capo use. This 'bird is tight! ) (ps2 - as expensive as they are, the Stewmac nut slot files are awesome. Practice on a clunker first, though, as they cut quickly. I not get to practice bone-dust and super-glue trick on that clunker. )

Yeah, I hear ya. What a long 4 months it was, too.

Congrats on your new 'bird! I rotate 3 - 1 out on a stand and 2 in their cases. 'Bird-week usually lasts 2. Hard to put down and hard to put away.